Winners, Losers . . . And the Rest of Us
A dialogue you might enjoy listening in on. It started with a comment Ron left on the preceding post.
Ron: People don’t have a language for praising/understanding non-winners. They immediately think ‘loser’, and can’t understand people who just won’t play.
Ron: Something that has changed also is that we have given up any notion of a “good try” or “fair play” having any particular virtue. It is somewhat cynically assumed that winners “write the history” so who cares about playing fair!
I wonder how much of this “winnerism” is a backlash to an increased theraputic/egalitarian (hmmm… feminized?) culture?
The virtue of teaching people sports is that it shows you how to lose, and losing occurs a lot in life. But now we just consign losers to gehenna…
Amba: My father once pointed out that for every team that wins a baseball pennant, — ? — I don’t know the correct numbers now — 11? have to lose. He thought about writing a book called “Losing: A Baseball Odyssey.” Never did, though.
Ron: A great Hitter in baseball fails 7 times out of 10! Humbling…
But why do you think they take steroids…because a clean loser would still be thought of as a loser; we beat on winners who take drugs, but ignore clean losers. Being ignored in America is worse than being a villain.
Amba: There’s a big world of non-winners out there. We’re like dark matter.
Only the stars shine, but we’ve got mass, baby.
Ron: and Charm! and odd motion in the Z axis! err…skip that one.
Don’t Blame the Other Side.
Obama is a wimp. Or a Stalinist. Or a wimp giving the store away to Stalinists.
The Republicans are obstructionists and/or racists.
I heard both points of view expressed in Florida and they both set off alarm bells in me. But I’m having a hard time explaining why, even to myself. It’s so easy to get caught up in arguing the foreground, the content of what’s being said, when what’s wrong is so much deeper and more systemic and infects both sides without distinction.
It’s not what either side does or says, it’s the motive that poisons everything they do and say. The motive is winning. American politics has become a huge, toxic Super Bowl in which appearing to advance positions or values or beliefs is only a means to an end. The end is power. And to that end, neither side will hesitate for a moment to distort, malign, and demonize the other, whatever the cost to the country. Not only what the two parties say, but what they do, the legislation they push, the wars they prosecute, is about political calculation and spoils first, principle a distant second. Perhaps in some cases principle is “sincerely” held, but precisely because it is so form-fitted to self-interest.
The voters are far more genuinely sincere in their beliefs, and so the politicians and their media whips manipulate and aggravate those beliefs, flashing trigger symbols, arousing exaggerated fears and hatreds in order to motivate people to vote for them, or at least against the other side. Voters may believe their portrayal of the other side as unAmerican, threatening, and evil, but the primary reason Republicans and Democrats regard each other as evil is that every Democrat elected is a Republican out of power, and vice versa.
You’ll probably tell me it’s no different than it’s ever been, that this is the only game in town and we have no choice but to play it. Not having been alive in 1835 or 1940, I have no idea whether you’re right that nothing has changed. But whether it’s better, worse, or just the same as always, it is so disgusting. It is so disgusting. I don’t ever want to talk, think, or write about politics again.
P.S. Even if it is equally calculated, I’ve been impressed by Newt Gingrich’s persistent civility, fair mix of credit and criticism to his opponents, and focus on ideas. It doesn’t seem to be working for him, though. He is widely despised and dismissed. It’s almost as if people now expect their emotions to be inflamed, and perceive a more civil and cerebral approach as insincere, or bloodless, or cold. or irrelevant. I’ll repeat my observation that much of the public has become addicted to “getting off” emotionally, to that satisfying, stimulating limbic-system workout, even if nothing is accomplished, even if it is downright counterproductive.
Pope Vs. Rabbi: The Great Debate
(Forwarded as a New Year’s greeting by my German teacher, Herr Heggen. I’m in Florida, having a lovely time with a lousy Internet connection.)
The Pope and the Rabbi
Several centuries ago, the Pope decreed that all the Jews had to convert to Catholicism or leave Italy . There was a huge outcry from the Jewish community, so the Pope offered a deal: he’d have a religious debate with the leader of the Jewish community. If the Jews won, they could stay in Italy ; if the Pope won, they’d have to convert or leave.
The Jewish people met and picked an aged and wise rabbi to represent them in the debate. However, as the rabbi spoke no Italian, and the Pope spoke no Yiddish, they agreed that it would be a ‘silent’ debate.
On the chosen day the Pope and rabbi sat opposite each other.
The Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. The rabbi looked back and raised one finger. Next, the Pope waved his finger around his head. The rabbi pointed to the ground where he sat. The Pope brought out a communion wafer and a chalice of wine. The rabbi pulled out an apple.
With that, the Pope stood up and declared himself beaten and said that the rabbi was too clever. The Jews could stay in Italy .
Later the cardinals met with the Pope and asked him what had happened. The Pope said, “First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded by holding up a single finger to remind me there is still only one God common to both our beliefs. Then, I waved my finger around my head to show him that God was all around us. The rabbi responded by pointing to the ground to show that God was also right here with us. I pulled out the wine and wafer to show that God absolves us of all our sins, and the rabbi pulled out an apple to remind me of the original sin. He bested me at every move and I could not continue.”
Meanwhile, the Jewish community gathered to ask the rabbi how he’d won.” I haven’t a clue,” said the rabbi.. “First, he told me that we had three days to get out of Italy , so I gave him the finger.. Then he tells me that the whole country would be cleared of Jews and I told him that we were staying right here. “And then what?” asked a woman. “Who knows?” said the rabbi. “He took out his lunch so I took out mine.”
Going Dark [UPDATED AGAIN]
My laptop screen is, at more and more angles. Soon it won’t light up at all.
So if you don’t hear from me for a few days, that’s all it is. I have to get to an Apple Store, and my ProCare membership has expired, and I have a choice between shlepping J there with me today (2 exits down Rte. 40 in the ginormous Southpoint Mall) and throwing myself on their mercy, or going in Fort Myers, Florida on my father’s birthday Thursday. Sucks either way. …
Actually, I just learned that it sucks worse than that: it will have to be out of my hands for as much as 3 to 5 business days. It may need a new logic board or motherboard. And the hard drive isn’t backed up.
So I have to hope it doesn’t die completely and I can keep working on it with the screen partway closed, until . . . when?
THE PLOT THICKENS: It only (or mostly) happens when it’s running on battery. I plugged it in, and it stopped. WTF does that mean??
SO NOW: It’s happening again while plugged in. Go figure.
Impatience: The Road Rage of the Keyboard
From the book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life
If time is perceived as an enemy, to insist that there is value in waiting is foolish. Advances in technology such as e-mail and instant messaging all presume the question “Why wait at all?” When I started using computers, in the mid-1970, I noticed that while the programs with which I kept track of the finances of several small businesses made my work much easier, they also made me more impatient. I went from being grateful for how quickly new software could do the bookkeeping to snarling at the machine for being so slow. While I knew that my desktop Apple was many times more powerful than the first UNIVAC, which had filled a huge room in the 1950s, I failed to be grateful for the inventiveness and skill that had made it possible Instead, I sighed each time I had to wait while the machine checked a record, made a computation, or saved to disk the work I had done.
One day, when I timed one such annoying delay and found that it constituted all of ten seconds, I felt as if I had been slapped in the face and warned: Pay attention–watch yourself. And when did, I saw an idiot groaning with impatience over a tiny increment of time. Technology had made a fool of me, for a few seconds of “waiting” in computer time is no longer than seconds spent “waiting” on a magnificent, rocky beach for the sun to rise over a pearl-tinted ocean; it is only my perception that makes them seem different. And how I perceive such things is a matter of spiritual discipline.
Our perception of time is subject to technological revision, and increased speed has generally translated into a subtle diminishment of our capacity to appreciate our immediate surroundings. . . . Wendell Berry has written eloquently of pulling off the high-speed world of an American interstate highway into an Appalachian campground, and needing more than an hour to slow down and adjust to the rhythms of his own body and the world close at hand.
~ Kathleen Norris
(Makes me think about the many similarities between being online and driving. A desktop is a minivan or SUV, a laptop a sedan or coupe, an iPhone or BlackBerry a sports car. The screen is the windshield. The keyboard is the gearshift and steering wheel. The engine is your brain. Slow-loading sites are traffic jams or stoplights. Don’t you curse and swear at the keyboard or keypad just the way you do behind the wheel? The only difference is, you can’t see the competing drivers and you don’t have a horn. Maybe computers should come with horns for the self-expression of frustration, which is how drivers use them 90% of the time anyway.)
Butter and Cheese
See,you wake up and you know what the post title is. It’s the big phrase at the top, the one people will read first. So you help them out, you show and not tell.
ooooooo
ahhhhhhh.
Now if I were writing a network news piece I’m practically done. I just have to jaw about what ever hobby horse I’m on, mention Edward R. Murrow, and I’ve got the “…itzer” part of some prize I’m supposed to win.
But we’re smarter chickens here aren’t we?
If this were a foodie blog, I’d have to be complaining about Danish butter distribution in Idaho.
If this were a health blog, I’d have to compare the dairy industry to IG Farben.
If this were The New Yorker, I’d have to use the word “avoirdupois” more than once.
And, lastly, if this were Vanity Fair I’d have to compliment supermodels on their moral superiority in choosing cocaine and cigarettes instead of butter and cheese.
Somehow, I now feel the need to talk about butter and cheese themselves, but why? We all know them; we may feel rueful about some of their aspects, but, hey, it’s not like they’re raising our taxes or invading other countries are they? (no, really…are they? No? Whew! You just don’t know who to trust these days)
While ambivalence is our mise en place here, (sorry, must’ve got some New Yorker on me) I’m going out on a limb and start the New Year by just flat out saying ‘Yay!’ to Butter and Cheese. My boldness is even giving me an attack of the vapors.
I hope my fellow Ambivaloids love something enough to wax on about here at some point this year… at their repose, of course!
A Brief for “Ambivalence”
It’s not for everyone. But the resolved have such strong, almost unanswerable arguments in favor of being resolved; I like having a strong defense of not being.
He thinks of nothing but ‘Political Justice’ . . . I explained what I thought of Dilke’s Character. Which resolved itself into this conclusion. That Dilke was a Man who cannot feel he has a personal identity unless he has made up his Mind about everything. The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up ones mind about nothing–to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party. The genus is not scarce in population. All the stubborn arguers you meet with are of the same brood–They never begin upon a subject they hve not preresolved on. They want to hammer their nail into you and if you turn the point, still they think you wrong. ~ John Keats
Ambiance 